#178: Jared Anderson & Sandor Gyerman (Andor Creative) — 100M+ Organic Views, Gen Z Marketing, and Social Media Authenticity

Sandor Gyerman and Jared Anderson, the dynamic co-founders of Andor Creative.

Founded in 2018 when they were Sophomores at Cleveland State University, Andor Creative was born to find more innovative ways to produce advertising and marketing content for companies, bridging the gap between Gen Z and established businesses in Greater Cleveland.

Since inception, their campaigns have generated over 100 million organic views across various social media platforms and their impressive and growing list of over 50 clients includes industry giants like Mercedes Benz USA, Nissan, and Volvo USA, to prominent individuals including a dozen NFL players, all from their office in Downtown Cleveland.

In our conversation, we'll explore the origins of their friendship, the influence of D1 collegiate sports on their approach to business, hustling door to door to get the business off the ground, the influence Cleveland has had on their work, their creative process, their takes on Gen Z, how to break through the noise and stay relevant and authentic in the ever-changing world of social media, and lots more!

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LINKS:
https://andorcreative.com/home
https://www.instagram.com/andorcreative/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandor-gyerman-108979172/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-anderson-03a1ba161/

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Past guests include Justin Bibb (Mayor of Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Steve Potash (OverDrive), Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Stewart Kohl (The Riverside Company), Mitch Kroll (Findaway — Acquired by Spotify), and many more.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Jeffrey Stern

What is Lay of The Land?

Telling the stories of entrepreneurship and builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Every Thursday, Jeffrey Stern helps map the Cleveland/NEO business ecosystem by talking to founders, investors, and community builders to learn what makes Cleveland/NEO special.

--AI-Generated--

Sandor Gyerman [00:00:00]:
You know, we were both division 1 athletes and that took up a lot of our time. And so after we stopped playing the sport, all of a sudden we had a whole lot of time. We would always say that we never let schooling get in the way of our education. You know, we started to read these types of books and we started to get an itch for business, you know, a short couple of days after we realized that there was a gap between the way that businesses were utilizing social media and that we were really good at social media because we spent 5, 6 hours a day on it since we're the Gen Z generation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:34]:
Let's discover what people are building in the Greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with Sandor Gyerman and Jared Anderson, the dynamic cofounders of Andor Creative. Founded in 2018 when they were sophomores at Cleveland State University, Andor Creative was born out of a desire to find a more innovative way to produce advertising and marketing content for companies, bridging the gap between Gen Z and established businesses in the Greater Cleveland area. Since inception, their campaigns have generated over 100,000,000 organic views across various social media platforms, and their impressive and growing list of over 50 clients includes industry giants like Mercedes, Nissan, Volvo, as well as prominent individuals, including about a dozen professional NFL players, all from their office in downtown Cleveland. In our conversation, we will explore the origins of their friendship, the influence of d one collegiate sports on their approach to business, hustling door to door to get the business off the ground, the influence of Cleveland on their work, their creative process, their takes on generation Z, how to break through the noise and stay relevant and authentic in an ever changing world of social media, and a whole lot more.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:09]:
So please enjoy my conversation with Sandor and Jared after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped 100 of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation architects Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to ia.layoftheland.fm. The link will also be in our show notes. Jared Sandor, thank you for for joining me today. I'd love to start before we dive into any substantive conversation with if you guys could just introduce yourselves so folks tuning in could associate the the voices with your names.

Jared Anderson [00:03:34]:
Yeah. Sandor, go ahead.

Sandor Gyerman [00:03:36]:
My name is Sandor Gyerman. Do you want me to little background or anything about me or just kinda say my name so they get my voice?

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:45]:
But name for now is great. We'll we'll get into the background in a moment.

Jared Anderson [00:03:49]:
Sounds good. I'm Jared Anderson.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:51]:
Right on. So I wanna start with both of you as people. To me, you both have this amazing energy and chemistry together. Like, candidly, your friendship is really fun to experience from the outside. And I'd love if you could just tell us both about how you came to know each other and a little bit about yourselves and also, you know, kind of the the evolution of your friendship over time.

Jared Anderson [00:04:18]:
Yeah. Sandal, go ahead.

Sandor Gyerman [00:04:20]:
I started with introducing my name. Jade, you started us off.

Jared Anderson [00:04:25]:
Long story short, I grew up in Strongsville, Ohio, suburb of Cleveland. When I was 21 months old, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I grew up thinking that I was weird, I was different from the rest of my friends and my classmates. I fell in love with the game of soccer at a very young age. So whenever I feel sad or down about myself, I would go and do things that would make me a better athlete. That kind of carried me through middle school and high school, And that's where I became best friends with Sandor. Our soccer our passion for soccer was the main thing that put us on the same team, put us in the same friend group. Then from there, we've grown into a business relationship, obviously. But, Sandor, if you wanna catch up, then we can kinda go from there.

Sandor Gyerman [00:05:05]:
Yeah. Certainly. Well, first of all, Jeffrey, I wanna thank you for having us on. Super blessed and honored to be on your podcast because you've had some exceptional people out here. So, yeah, I grew up in Strongsville as well. As Jared had mentioned, I was a soccer player. My parents didn't have a whole lot of money when I was growing up. I remember I was in the cafeteria as a sophomore in high school, and my friends came up to me.

Sandor Gyerman [00:05:31]:
They were pushing me. They were shoving me. They were making fun of me. And they said, Alex, your dad is a garbage picker. And I looked at them confused, but I knew exactly what they were talking about. So my dad came here from former Yugoslavia in Europe with nothing but the clothes on his back and didn't have a whole lot of money. And so my dad would do anything that he could to help pay for our bills. And so one of the things that he would do was scrap metal.

Sandor Gyerman [00:05:58]:
And so my friends were playing basketball in the development and he got out of his minivan with his cane. He was limping and he picked up a grill from the garbage and he threw it in the back of his van. And my friends saw this. And so they bullied me for it, man. They said, your dad's a garbage picker. And but I remember something. I came home that day and I was upset and I was crying and yelling at my mom, like, no one else has to deal with this stuff. This is so embarrassing.

Sandor Gyerman [00:06:25]:
And something clicked, and I realized that my dad was working so hard for me to give me a life that he's never had. And so I just I started to work really hard. My grades were really bad at the time. My I was horrible at soccer and I just turned it on and got my grades up, started to take soccer a lot more seriously. I was on JVB as a freshman and by senior year I was blessed to be the starting goalkeeper and I started to get some division 1 offers. And I don't wanna go too far into college, Jared, but that's kind of my my upbringing till then.

Jared Anderson [00:06:59]:
Yeah. And the best part was throughout high school, I was a forward in soccer, and Sandor was a goalkeeper. So before practice, during practice, during the off season, I would always shoot on him. We came up with different games and compete against each other. And as I got better, I was able to push him to get better. He would get a little better than me, and he'd push me to get better. So it was really cool that we were able to hold a high standard to one another and help each other get to the best ability and the best soccer players that we could be able to push each other opposed to just doing it on our own. And so, yeah, Sandra went off to Cleveland State University.

Jared Anderson [00:07:33]:
I went off to Ohio State University. I played soccer for a year there. I didn't love the lifestyle I was living. I never got into the party scene. I was, spending a lot of my time alone in my dorm room reading books or watching YouTube videos similar to what Sandor is doing in Cleveland. And I'd always loved Cleveland, growing up in Strongsville. And his roommate was moving out at Cleveland State, so he invited me to move in. I had talked to the Cleveland State soccer coach, and I was still in high school.

Jared Anderson [00:08:01]:
So I had a relationship with the coach at Cleveland State, and They offered me a spot on the team, so I ended up transferring to Cleveland State, playing soccer there, and moving in with Sandor.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:11]:
I I love that. I it was more than apparent to me the first time I met you guys how I mean, for one that you you both just constantly, you know, push each other both for fun, but also as kind of intellectual and I guess in your past, you know, physical sparring partners. And the dynamic again was really it's just immediately apparent from spending any kind of time with with you guys. How did how did you find the evolution of that going forward? And where did you find the collective entrepreneurial inclination? Like, where do you feel like that came from over your time progressing through collegiate sports?

Sandor Gyerman [00:08:46]:
I think, naturally, I was always super entrepreneurial. I'll talk about personally and then kind of how Jared and I collaborated. But I remember growing up, I was always shoveling people's driveways, doing anything that I could to to make a buck of my own. In high school, I started a a t shirt brand called Vidaloo because all of my friends were wearing, like, these cup for colored t shirts at Vineyard Vines, and they were expensive. They were like $60 on the website. So my buddy and I were like, well, let's make some t shirts that we could sell for cheaper that are still that same type of vibe. And we sold tons of t shirts in high school. So I always just I remember another story in high school.

Sandor Gyerman [00:09:28]:
My sister was in an FCS, family consumer science class, and she got like, 12 cupcakes. And I remember she gave them to me, and I went around and I sold them off in high school. So I always just had that entrepreneurial spirit. Jared, go ahead and talk about your personal first, and then we could talk about how we came together.

Jared Anderson [00:09:46]:
Yeah. I have very similar upbringings, cutting grass for money, shoveling driveways, doing things like that. We got, at a football game when I was in middle school, we got donuts. It was like the last box. We were selling them for more. And the cop came. We weren't allowed to resell the doughnuts, I guess. We got in trouble for that.

Jared Anderson [00:10:04]:
But kinda just that similar, like, entrepreneurial spirit was within me. I didn't know I the label for it. I didn't know that I was, you know, doing entrepreneurial things. It just kinda felt natural to me. It kind of stayed within me throughout high school and into college.

Sandor Gyerman [00:10:19]:
Yeah. And then I remember, you know, while we were playing soccer together and we quit playing the sport of soccer, we kind of put that same drive and determination that we put into sports right into business. And we just worked super hard and, you know, did the late late nights, extra hours, and we just kind of understood what it took to be I get I mean, to be great. You know? Like, we knew that you have to put in the work in order to be elite and successful.

Jared Anderson [00:10:49]:
Yeah. And same, it took some figuring out what we were both good at or better than each other at. And soccer is pretty apparent. Here's a goalkeeper who's better with his hands. I was better at shooting. It was pretty apparent. But when we started the business, we got our first client, and we both wanted to do everything. So I would manage the account for a week.

Jared Anderson [00:11:07]:
He would manage it for a week. I would take the photos and the videos and do all the captions and those types of things. Then he would have weird constantly argue about who is better, who's looked better, who's got more likes and followers and things like that. And it took some time to figure out that he could do what he was good at. I could do what we what I was good at. And when we came together, we'd be able to accomplish a lot more. But we definitely argued and fought a lot at the beginning to try to figure out how we could complement each other, oppose and compete with one another.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:35]:
Why did you guys step away from soccer?

Sandor Gyerman [00:11:39]:
Good question.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:40]:
Yeah. I feel like we,

Jared Anderson [00:11:42]:
I don't wanna use the word burnt out, but we had put so much time and effort into it that I didn't think we were getting out what we were putting into it at that point. And at that point, I felt like we had a passion for the business, and we could put that drive, like he said, into something else that we thought would pay off opposed to running into something that might not pay off as much in the long run.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:04]:
So where did the inspiration for the business come from? You know, you mentioned getting that first customer and some internal turmoil amongst both of you, but what you know, where did this idea come from? What did it look like to get started? What were some of those initial challenges? And ultimately, you know, how did you hone in on on social media as kind of the platform to explore?

Sandor Gyerman [00:12:27]:
So, you know, we were both division 1 athletes and that that took up a lot of our time. And so after we stopped playing the sport, all of a sudden we had a whole lot of time. And Jared and I well, I don't know if it was you that remembered this quote or me, but we would always say that we never let school get in the way of our education. And Jared Love that. Jared read a lot of books and I like to listen to a lot of podcasts. Like, we'd be at class, and Jared would be reading a book, and I'd be listening to a podcast, which is probably really rude. But, you know, we started to read these types of books and we started to get an itch for business. And we would go to the engineering building at Cleveland State on the 4th or 5th floor that overlooked the city, and we would just brainstorm business ideas.

Sandor Gyerman [00:13:15]:
And, you know, a short couple of days after we realized that there was a gap between the way that businesses were utilizing social media and that we were really good at social media because we spent 5, 6 hours a day on it since we're the gen the gen z generation and we we know it well. So we're like, well, why don't we run social media accounts for businesses?

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:38]:
So before we get to talking in-depth about social media and the actual nature of the work you're doing, and then this may be the most boomer question I could throw your way. Despite my millennial youth, I'm an old soul at heart. And, you know, maybe perhaps if you're not Gen z, you're a boomer regardless of what generation you are. But I love to do a bit of stage setting before we go deeper into social media and talk about Gen Z generally. This kind of mobile first, mobile native group of folks like yourself who have spent a great amount of time on social media. And, you know, just, like, even anecdotally, I know who who often maybe even have greater aspirations to be professional YouTubers than to be professional athletes on the kind of track that you guys were on. What do we need to know about Gen z?

Jared Anderson [00:14:25]:
That's a very broad but good question. I think Gen z wants to do things their own way. I don't think they're used to or as responsive to the traditional, this is how it's always been done, so this is the way it has to be. It's a lot of instant gratification and convenience. We're living in the Amazon Prime ages where people want it to order it today, get it tonight, get it tomorrow, things at their convenience. They don't necessarily want to wait for things. I think the same thing with social media. You can take a photo on vacation, you can post it, and your friends are commenting and liking within seconds of that.

Jared Anderson [00:15:05]:
So I think that I'm excited to be a part of Generation Z and to be growing up with Generation Z, and I think that we're kind of repaving a lot of old traditional methods of doing things. And I think it's really cool to be a part of that generation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:18]:
Perhaps, like, honing in on a more specific question, because I agree it's quite quite a broad starting point. What what maybe would you say are the biggest misconceptions that folks have about Gen Z? And then ancillary to that, what would you say are some of the bigger mistakes that brands have when tight trying to to talk to and communicate with Gen Z?

Sandor Gyerman [00:15:42]:
Yeah. I think one thing that I thought of is if you are a brand and you're on social media, I don't think brands understand the magnitude and the importance of the posts that they're releasing because I believe that social their social media brand presence is their the face of their brand. And so a lot of these brands are just, like, checking the box off of posting, but they don't realize that by posting bad content, they're actually hurting the reputation of their brand. And so that's kind of where we find that pain point in a lot of businesses of like, hey, you're making these posts. It's great. But look at the posts. They're not appealing. They're going completely against what you guys are preaching and what you believe in with your brand.

Sandor Gyerman [00:16:30]:
Let us come in and help you create content that people want to see that is aligned with your brand. And, yeah, I'll leave it at that. I don't know if Jerry, if you have any other touches on that.

Jared Anderson [00:16:43]:
No. That's what I'll say.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:45]:
So you guys notice this opportunity, you know, very early on of, you know, really ways that brands, companies could better utilize social media to to their ends. How how did you go about getting started? What what does that look like?

Jared Anderson [00:17:01]:
So we had the idea, and so we printed off $10 business cards from Staples. We argued over who would pay for it and who would Venmo the other person. And we didn't have a car at the time, so we took the Rapid from Terminal Tower to West 117. And we walked from the Rapid Station to Staples, picked up our business cards, got back on the Rapid, and just started getting off at various stops and going into restaurants, coffee shops, and local businesses telling them we had this awesome social media marketing company, when, in reality, we had no credibility, no track record. We were just asking for opportunities, basically. And we went into a coffee shop in Ohio City, Coffee Cafe. It's across from the West Side Market, and we asked to speak to the owner. And he happened to be there, and we said, hey, if you let us run your social media account for 1 month, you can pay us whatever you think is fair after that 1 month.

Jared Anderson [00:17:53]:
We'll show you all the numbers, show you all the posts, and kinda go from there. So he took a chance on us, and all of a sudden we were entrepreneurs. We were wearing, you know, the nice pants, the dress shirts, and everything we could afford trying to play the part of being businessmen. But we worked really hard at this coffee shop. We created content that was really cool at that time. We would take coffee out into the community and do, like, collaboration style posts. If people are walking by, we put lemonade in their hand and ask if we could take their photo, you know, getting people in the community involved and running the social media account for this coffee shop. And after a month, we went in there with our nicest clothes that we had.

Jared Anderson [00:18:32]:
We gave her some free coffee. We felt like $1,000,000, and we talked about the benefits of social media, and that started our social media marketing company.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:42]:
Wow. I love that. I mean, it's right out of Mark Cuban's Shark Tank spiel of going door to door at the beginning, just doing these things that that probably don't scale, but that's such an amazing origin story. So obviously since then, you know, you guys have evolved quite a bit from those days generating, I believe, over a 100,000,000 in organic views across the work that you've done for for brands and companies locally and and beyond. I'd love if if you could kind of fill in the blanks of the evolution of and or creative over that period and, you know, if you can kinda, you know, break it into chapters or however you've thought about the evolution of the business over time. Just take us through through the story of it.

Sandor Gyerman [00:19:26]:
Well, I I think of it as 2 chapters. The first chapter was Generation Z Marketing LLC, and I remember Jared and I taking a flight down to Miami. I think this was our 2nd year into the business of owning the company. And we got there and we've met with a guy who owns another production company. We wanted to learn the ropes and we wanted to hear how he ran his business. And we went in into this meeting thinking we're so cool, we're so smart, we're young, we have this generation Z Marketing LLC. We sat down and he just started roasting us. And the thing that stood out to us the most was how we roasted our name.

Sandor Gyerman [00:20:06]:
And he said, this is the most generic business name ever. You're never gonna build a brand with Generation Z Marketing LLC. You gotta change that. So that that's when chapter 1 ended. And Jared and I got back flying back to Cleveland and we're like, all right, we got to change our name. So we just combined Anderson and Sandor, and we got Andor with a dot. And we're like, well, that seems like a brand. And that's what Jeff Bezos did started.

Sandor Gyerman [00:20:33]:
The rest is the 3.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:38]:
I love that. That's amazing.

Jared Anderson [00:20:41]:
So, yeah, I mean, to go a little more in-depth of the chapters, at the beginning, I don't know how long, but for the first, I'd say probably a year or 2 or just Sandor and I. And at the beginning, we realized that he was better at more of the creative elements, the photos, videos, and kinda thinking outside the box. I was more so on the business side of things, behind the scenes, the captions, staying consistent, talking to clients, things like that. We came together and focused on what each of us were good at, and we that's how we ran the first clients that we got. We got to a point where we were so busy spending all of our time managing the accounts that we had that we didn't really have a lot of time growing our business. So we realized that, hey. We need to take a risk and maybe hire somebody else, pay some of our own money to take some of the work off of our plate, to free up our time, to hopefully build the business. And we hired an amazing content creator, and he came in and started making photos and videos and did a phenomenal job, which gave us a little bit more free time to hopefully go and get more clients.

Jared Anderson [00:21:43]:
Somewhere throughout that journey, we started making videos just for our social media clients, and they loved it. They were doing very well on social media, and we realized, hey, there's plenty of businesses out there that need videos like this. Why don't we add a social media element or a video production element to our business to go hand in hand with the social media side? So once again, we went out, we started offering free videos to anybody that really wanted one to give them an opportunity to see how we operate, the type of videos we can make, and how much value we can add to that. So that's probably maybe 3 years ago today. We added on that video production side of things, and that's what we've been focusing on since then, just getting more and more clients to manage their social media and making more and more videos.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:30]:
So I think you guys have mentioned some of the core tenants of branding and marketing across the work you've done already, building user trust and buy in, how to drive awareness, creating buzz, some of the the literal activities that that you've done. But I'd love to, at a high level, understand, you know, how you've thought about what the objective is, you know, of a campaign and kinda take us through the creative process of understanding, you know, the kind of story and message that a brand wants to relay and going through the process of of creating the right content to to tell those kinds of stories.

Jared Anderson [00:23:07]:
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, all we really do is share stories. And when we're doing our job best, we're representing the story of the client that we're working with. So whether that's on social media, in a 30 second video, or a 10 minute video, whatever it is, all we're doing is representing who they are as an individual, as a business, as a community, whatever that may be. So that's kind of what we've focused on is just not necessarily getting involved too much. I mean, obviously, making it look good and having a marketing element in there and all of those types of things, but really just focusing on representing who it is that we're working with, if that makes sense.

Sandor Gyerman [00:23:47]:
And I think just touching off of that too, another point that I'd add to that is authentically representing the brand. And I think so many businesses, even in, like, commercials and stuff, they, like, make it more scripted and you have to say these words perfectly. Where I think people buy into a brand where they're authentic and they're genuine. And so, like, showing behind the scenes stuff, like so for example, we work with some car dealerships, like, we'll show some people behind the seats in the actual shop that will interview the mechanics. We'll interview the mechanics. We'll, you know, interview the salespeople. We'll actually, like, share the behind the scenes, the authentic side of the business, not just this peppered up, pampered, perfect, you know, side of the business, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:37]:
Yeah. I am. It's the it's the unvarnished truth. It's it's not, you know, overly polished. It's it's kinda the reality of what's going on under the hood, which is often not great. You know, that but that's authentic. And relatable. And relatable.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:51]:
Absolutely.

Jared Anderson [00:24:52]:
And I think just going back to that, like, from a campaign standpoint, a lot of our clients want different things. And some people want the views more than other people who might like more of the storytelling aspect where it might not go viral, but they're doing a very good job of sharing their customers, the community, the people that make up their business, their stories, how long they've been working there, the favorite parts of their job, things like that. So we have a pretty broad range of things that we're able to work on with our clients where some people like the views and the virality and all that kind of thing, where other people like more of the authentic, like you said, behind the scenes storytelling aspect of things. I think that's the beauty of social media where it's a place where you might be scrolling on Instagram and see somebody sharing how much they love their job. You might see a product, and then you might see a viral video that's trending with cool music, and it's all edited. And maybe the next one is an iPhone video of someone's dog, and that guy had a 1,000,000 views. You know, it's so crazy, but it's such a cool place where you can put all of those things together, and they all make sense. And they all have a place that's welcome to them to host all of that content for all those different brands and people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:03]:
What have you guys learned about virality on social media and the reliable reproducibility of it across, you know, different brands that that you work with?

Jared Anderson [00:26:15]:
Yeah. So strictly from a virality aspect, I think the most viral things are the most easily consumable thing. Where if you wanna get into branding and perception, all of that is a little bit more of, like, the polished high quality videos and photo content that are a good representation of your brand. But it seems like the trendy viral things are the things where you're watching it because you wanna watch it. You wanna be entertained. You don't feel like you're being sold to or pitched to. It's more of the, this is, you know, fun to watch. This is fun to share.

Jared Anderson [00:26:49]:
I wanna be a part of the content that they're sharing, things like that. And it's not overly produced and edited and perfect lighting and all of that kind of stuff.

Sandor Gyerman [00:26:58]:
And then just touching on that too on the sides. We have two sides of our business, the social media management and then the video production. And what we've kind of done is taken that authentic viral type video and trying to produce commercials with it. And I'm gonna use the car business as an example again, but a lot of these car dealers are making videos of a salesman, like, yelling at the camera or and our generation, like, when it's a when you're getting sold, we just scroll right by it. Or even if there's, like, a paid ad on Instagram Instagram or Facebook, if it's you kinda scroll by it. So we're like, well, why don't we just make TV commercials that people wanna see? So, like, for car dealership of Ford, we're not gonna have a salesman yelling at you. We're gonna make a sick type video of a Ford, you know, driving locally through Cleveland or, you know, doing things that people would, oh, that's actually like the type of music that's being played. That's a cool video that I wanna watch.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:54]:
Yeah. No. I mean, I I think that that makes a lot of sense. The kind of resounding theme being the the authenticity of it and and building a relationship with the community.

Jared Anderson [00:28:05]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:06]:
How have you guys thought about what it takes to build and maintain a online community around a brand and some of the the tactics that you've used on on that front.

Jared Anderson [00:28:19]:
I think the most important thing is staying consistent. You know, if you think of it as social media as, like, a friendship, if you talk to your husband or your wife, your friend once a month, you're probably not gonna have a very good relationship with them. It's the same with social media where if you post once a month, it's hard for people to keep up with it and want to comment and like and share your stuff. It's a lot more easy if you're staying consistent. You're showing more and more parts of your business and things that are happening, and you're keeping people kinda up to date with the things that you're doing. So I'd say the first and foremost most important thing is just staying consistent. And then the common answer here is just staying authentic and not feeling like you're selling to people, and you're kind of including them in the journey and where you're going. And people like being a part of that story and being a part of things that are, you know, growing and part of a community that's bigger than just themselves.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:19]:
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Jeffrey Stern [00:31:09]:
And I I think if you take that to a somewhat hilarious and cynical extreme, you know, it gets down to just kind of like strobing, you know, ads maybe directly embedded in neural implants that we'll all get from Elon Musk soon enough. But, like, where where do you see like, how in the compression of attention spans and just the the short form of this content, I'm curious how you guys have thought about, for 1, where you see it all going and with the rapid evolution of social media platforms, you know, really like TikTok didn't even have a large presence until quite recently. You know, how do you stay ahead of of those trends and ensure strategically that that what you're doing is gonna remain relevant?

Jared Anderson [00:31:53]:
I mean, just the second part of that question is I think it's important to not necessarily get complacent and being able to evolve and adapt, with social media. And like you said, it's changed so much. But day to day, month to month, it's not really changing that much. So just being able to adapt and evolve to what's working on social media, the different trends, the different videos, and things like that. And then also, like, it helps. So when we go and create content, for example, we typically go once a week, once every 2 weeks, maybe once a month, but at that's, like, the maximum time we'll go between creating content. And within that time frame, the trends and the virality and all those things aren't really gonna change that much. So creating content that's consistent, keeping up with the trends and things like that, I think we'll always be able to stay at the forefront where if you're kinda going through different chains of commands about different posts and you're planning out content months months of advance and things like that, I think there's a much better chance of getting kinda left in the dust and not being able to adapt to this current trends that are working on social media.

Sandor Gyerman [00:32:59]:
But, Jared, I'm just thinking, like, as reels, like like, now they're just getting trimmed down more and more and more. Like, what's after, a 3 second reel or what's after a 3 second YouTube short? Because they weren't Yeah.

Jared Anderson [00:33:13]:
I actually just heard yesterday somebody in this space is talking about how horizontal longer form videos are coming back big time. And those are the next trends. So I also think You're gonna keep repeat itself. Yeah. And we can go back to more of that traditional long form vlog style video.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:32]:
Yep. It's a pendulum. It just comes back and forth. Yep.

Jared Anderson [00:33:35]:
Long long answer short, it's gonna come back and history repeats itself.

Sandor Gyerman [00:33:40]:
That's your guess, Jared, though.

Jared Anderson [00:33:43]:
We'll see. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:46]:
if the if the first chapter of this journey is is Generation Z Marketing and after, you know, a humbling roasting from this mentor of yours, it becomes and or creative for chapter 2 and you guys have grown the business over time. If you look to the future and imagine chapter 3, how do you guys think about it? What what does success ultimately look like? What is the the impact that you guys would love to have as you continue to grow out the the business? Yeah. I would just love to hear your perspective on on where you would ultimately like to take this.

Sandor Gyerman [00:34:19]:
The first thing I thought of is, I think Jared and I started the business, I think indirectly, we didn't even realize that we love to take care of people and that how highly we love relationships with people. And so our clients didn't even they they turned in from working colleagues and clients to best friends and people that we have real relationships with, that we go golf with, that we eat dinners with, that we go out to lunch with. And I think just kind of passing that torch along by the culture that we create here at Andor, which I think we've began to do. And so just like, the way that we do business, I think, is different. And the people that have came in and worked with us have realized that and have our clique to it, where they're like, man, like, work can be meaningful and purposeful, and it can be in the business of being you know, obviously, making videos, but in the business of of of human beings and, like, building relationships. And so I could see ourselves just continually growing the company and, again, passing the torch down of the culture that we have here of doing business that is relationship oriented.

Jared Anderson [00:35:34]:
Yeah. That's well said. And I also think like a couple years ago to then fast forward to now to then look ahead to the future, like a lot of the things that we used to talk about, like, we loved the lifestyle we were living when we had 3 clients who were living at Cleveland State University, and we were thinking of ideas, envisioning the future. And I remember, like, thinking back then, like, what's our dream job? And our dream job was doing that, but at, like, a larger scale. Having an office, having a team, having more clients, having more reach, and having more people that we can, like you said, like, bring on our team and bring together. And so now that we've evolved from where we were back then to now and looking forward, I absolutely love the lifestyle living now. I love the team we have in the office and the clients we're able to work with. And I hope to keep doing this, but at a larger and larger scale.

Jared Anderson [00:36:28]:
So we have a team of 12 of us now. Imagine if we had a team of a 100 of us. And instead of being in one city, we are in 5 cities, and we're able to leave more of a bigger impact with more people and the culture and the projects that we're able to work with just at a larger scale.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:46]:
Mhmm. What has building this company in Cleveland meant to you guys? What what has been the role of of Cleveland specifically?

Jared Anderson [00:36:53]:
Our roots. Growing up in growing up in Strongsville, Cleveland is always the coolest city in the world. Watching the Guardians and the Browns and the Cavs, I always aspire to, you know, be a part of something happening in Cleveland. And we've traveled all over the world and the country and we'll see, you know, cool cities or meet cool people, but there's nothing quite like Cleveland. And you can go, you can search, look for things, but you'll never find a city exactly like Cleveland. And I think that it's very cool to be able to part, grow, and build something in this amazing city like Cleveland is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:33]:
What have been your favorite and or more successful campaigns or pieces of content? And what you know, kinda take us through some of those and and what what you felt made them stand out in a meaningful way.

Jared Anderson [00:37:47]:
I mean, I think,

Sandor Gyerman [00:37:49]:
I hope that I answer your sec, this question, but I kind of just I don't wanna go too far off of it. But honestly, the most meaningful things are, again, the people that have started to work with us and getting feedback like they are loving their job, they're happier, they're more joyful. They love their job. They love their lifestyle. And being able to provide something like that for somebody is so fulfilling and so awesome. I think it's cool to be able to work with, like, some of the Browns players and make some videos with them and getting to build relationships with those guys that are, I guess, you could say impact players in the city of Cleveland and being able to represent and make videos for those types of people has been really, really cool.

Jared Anderson [00:38:43]:
Yeah. And I'll talk real quick about so we started working with an exotic car dealership, I think, about 3 years ago. And at the beginning, it was a lot of, like, hype videos and high quality videos, like, showcasing their cars and things like that, the engines and things like that. And there is this Aston Martin, and we had to we're creating content, and we found this pen in there that was, like, limited edition custom Aston Martin pen. And Sandor made a video, like, clicking it out from, like, the middle of the the dashboard, and he, like, played it with it in his fingers a little bit, and he put it back in. And we didn't really have any content, so I was like, alright. Like, I'll post it. It's kinda different from the content that we've been posting.

Jared Anderson [00:39:25]:
It's not very, like, vehicle specific. It's just like a pen in a luxury vehicle. When we posted it, and I think we got 4 or 5,000,000 views. And we're like, woah. So it's like these small details that people didn't know about that can really help our content go more viral and get in front of more people. So I think that and it was shot on an iPhone, it was shot with, you know, his legs in the background with his finger, like there was nothing The lighting wasn't perfect. The audio wasn't perfect. It was just a very authentic and genuine video, and a lot of people wanted to see those types of things.

Jared Anderson [00:40:01]:
So that really opened our eyes to creating viral content and content that people wanna see.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:06]:
What have been some of the other earned pieces of of wisdom that both of you have taken from the work that you hadn't anticipated?

Sandor Gyerman [00:40:16]:
I think I love I stole this from Craig Rochelle, which is a quote that says that the business is temporary, but the relationships are eternal. And I know I keep honing in on that, or just the importance of, like, relationships, Jeffrey. And, like, I think there are there are lots of again, I don't think our content is that, like, that amazing or that much better than everyone else's. I think we do a very great job, but I think what we hold ourselves to a high standard on is how we take care of our the people that we work with and the importance of our relationships going above and beyond.

Jared Anderson [00:40:52]:
Yeah. And I think Sandor and I both grew up with very responsible, respectful, amazing parents and a lot of the things that they've taught us about doing things the right way, doing it right the first time, things like that. It's been really crazy to see how much that translates just to the business world of doing things the right way, taking care of our clients, and seeing how that has paid off. And not just doing things in hopes of them paying off, but doing them because that's the right way to do things. Seeing how that's kinda come full circle is really cool and fulfilling to see.

Sandor Gyerman [00:41:26]:
Yeah. I asked Jared 2 days ago, we were driving back home from Canton, Ohio, and I said, what are 5 nonnegotiables for our business, not things that we would do? And it's cool that those are the things that we talked about. We're, like, you know, not taking advantage of our clients, not stealing, not cheating, not lying, being honest. And it was cool that, like, those were the types of things that we value that really stood out to me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:52]:
What have you 2 learned about each other? I'm curious particularly as it's, you know, in relation to what it was like as teammates versus now as business partners. You know, I imagine you guys were obviously very close before all this started. What what have you 2 continued to learn about each other? What what surprised you about each other?

Sandor Gyerman [00:42:11]:
I think first thing I thought of Jared was his honesty. About a few years ago, we had a client, we had this huge Shelby Baja truck and it was a very expensive truck and we went to shoot it at this mansion property And Jared's backing it up and he hits his basketball hoop and whatever, that to the bar and truck and we're like, oh my god. What are we gonna do? And the first thing Jared did was he called the client and he said what happened. We didn't treat he didn't try to cover it up. He didn't try to he was super honest and transparent. And that's just one example. And I feel like as I've noticed Jared the past 5, 6 years of business, he's always been consistently honest and transparent.

Jared Anderson [00:42:51]:
That was a tough call to make there. Yeah. That's a fantastic question. I'd say a couple of things. Sandor, when he sets his mind to something, it's all or nothing. There's no fiftyfifty. It's a 100% or 0%. He's all in on everything that he does.

Jared Anderson [00:43:11]:
And then the other thing is that he is consistently inconsistent, but he's always going in the same direction. And so some days, he might joke around more. Sometimes, he might slack off, but he's always then he'll make up for it at midnight at night editing a video or things like that. But he's all over the place with his fashion and his jokes and all that kind of stuff, but he's always moving in the similar direction. And it's it took some time to figure that out, but I'm glad that we have, and we have a very good system that we're running with now. But, yeah, I've definitely learned to understand that it's gonna be very inconsistently consistent.

Sandor Gyerman [00:43:51]:
What about how about this, Jerry? This is better way. Consistently spontaneous.

Jared Anderson [00:43:56]:
There you go. Yeah. You answered my question.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:00]:
I like that framing of it.

Sandor Gyerman [00:44:02]:
There we go.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:04]:
That's why you guys are are the marketing pros. Yes. Going back to something you mentioned earlier, Jared, about how in the earlier days you had observed that you were spending more of your time, probably too much, you know, doing work within the business rather than, you know, on the business and growing it. And I'm curious, as you guys have worked through that and grown the business, what you've learned about people and leadership and management as the team is obviously beyond the both of you at this point.

Jared Anderson [00:44:37]:
Yeah. I think a lot of it goes back to soccer. And a lot of things. When I played soccer, I respected the players that were, a, good players, but also worked hard and did the right things. If you're not that good at soccer necessarily, but you show up early, you work hard, you push yourself, you want your team to win, Those are all things that you it's a choice to do that, to root for your team and to support your team, to show up early, to work hard. And I think a lot of those things are apparent in leadership today in business or whatever it might be, but it relates back to sports where I, you know, saw it compared to where if people are doing the right things, they're showing up early, they're working hard. I want to be affiliated with people that do that. And so now that I'm in a position of leadership, I'm hoping to be somebody that people want to work with and look up to and work on projects, like, with and things like that.

Jared Anderson [00:45:31]:
And then also, like, finding the right mix of projects with our clients that we work on or finding the right people to work on those projects or just putting people in the best positions to succeed, and then our clients will do better, our business will do better, things like that. So also just having that distinction of where we need to step in a little bit more and where we can let other people run on different

Sandor Gyerman [00:45:55]:
things. Yeah. I definitely think that I I know some people say they're, like, natural board leaders. I don't think that I'm a natural board leader. And I think that I personally had to work on it a lot. And so a lot of times, like I still do, on the way to work, I listen to, like, a leadership podcast. I'm always I'm trying to consume that type of content because I believe what you're consuming, you become. And so I can listen to a lot more leadership type podcasts and stuff because I'm really I'm really just like I like to make videos, and I'm creative, and I'm I'm not naturally, like, a leader.

Sandor Gyerman [00:46:34]:
And so I've just been trying to honestly, like, listen to that type of content in hopes that I could be more of a leader. And I think right now I struggle with, like, being on time. Like, I have to work on that. I have to work for like, to be on time places and be early. Like, it doesn't come naturally or easy to me. And I'm not saying it does for other people, but I definitely struggle with it. So understanding that, like, being early, leading by example and things. Another thing I struggle with is, like, getting projects done on time.

Sandor Gyerman [00:47:06]:
Like in school, I was always horrible at, like, getting my homework done on time. And so, like, understanding that if I wanna be a leader that people wanna follow, I have to be sharp. I have to be quick to answer people's texts. I gotta I gotta submit work fast because if I'm trying to practice if I'm trying to preach something that I'm not practicing, then I'm a toxic, horrible leader. So I've been really trying to grow and understand what leadership is and be better at it because I think everything rises and falls on leadership.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:37]:
What are you guys most excited about looking forward?

Jared Anderson [00:47:40]:
This might sound very cliche, but every day for us is so wildly random and different. And I quite literally am excited for the rest of my day today and tomorrow and Friday. And I literally wake up every day, and I'm looking forward to the day that's ahead of me. And the cool thing is being in this business, never know what the day might hold and what might come up, what opportunities might come up, what projects we need to work on, who might call us, who might text us. So I like I said, I absolutely love the lifestyle I'm living, and I'm so excited to continue living out this lifestyle.

Sandor Gyerman [00:48:15]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing, Jared. I agree. I think, yeah, the next day to come Today, yesterday was just such an amazing day. We just got done working. And I know it's kind of outside work related, but we were at the golf course and we were on like the 12th pool. And we had, like, a volleyball game scheduled after the game.

Sandor Gyerman [00:48:36]:
And I literally was just I yelled out because I was, like, so joyful. And I'm just, like, so grateful to just, like, be where I'm at and super undeserving of where we're at and just so blessed, man. Like, every day, every hour has just been so so awesome, so fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:54]:
Well, I'm happy for you guys. I hope it keeps coming.

Sandor Gyerman [00:48:56]:
Same. But I I really do think it's a mindset. And like Jared had mentioned earlier in the podcast, like, even when we had when we were making $250 a month going to Cleveland State to get, like, groceries for free, like, we still just had that mindset where we thought we were on top of the world and we thought, like, everything was amazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:15]:
What do you feel is left unsaid that is the most important part of your guys' journeys that we haven't talked about yet.

Jared Anderson [00:49:25]:
Probably our faith. Our faith and belief in God that everything happens for a reason and we're right where we're supposed to be.

Sandor Gyerman [00:49:34]:
Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. It's definitely our faith in Jesus. That's what I was gonna say.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:40]:
Right on. Well, before we, I'll turn it to our our traditional closing question then, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland for something that other folks may not know about, but perhaps they should.

Jared Anderson [00:49:56]:
Springville Golf Club in North Olmsted. If you like to golf, it's good and it's a fun course. It might have the question might have been food related there, but it's also a hidden gem in the golf community. So go to spring

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:12]:
No. Absolutely. Anything counts. Perfect.

Sandor Gyerman [00:50:16]:
This is Springville Country Club. That's funny, Jared. What do you mean? The Andor headquarters, downtown Cleveland, 921 Huron Roadies, spread above Wild Eagle. So we're gonna come check us out. We'd love to have you guys get a water, a nice Gatorade, maybe a prime. We got some snacks. We got some pistachios.

Jared Anderson [00:50:39]:
A couple of jokes.

Sandor Gyerman [00:50:40]:
Couple of jokes.

Jared Anderson [00:50:41]:
It's really spontaneous.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:45]:
And, the fun wall of quotes.

Sandor Gyerman [00:50:47]:
Yep. Wall of quotes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:50]:
What, in the spirit of that, if people had things they wanted to to follow up with you guys about, what would be the best way for them to do it? 440-334-9704. You can

Sandor Gyerman [00:51:02]:
call. I'll say it again. 440-334-9704.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:08]:
Give you a call. Wow. I love it. Bold. Just put in the number out there.

Sandor Gyerman [00:51:12]:
The number out there. You guys call me. Anybody.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:17]:
Cool. Jared's intentionally, you know, quiet on that one.

Jared Anderson [00:51:21]:
I knew that was funny. I knew that was funny.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:27]:
Well, I just wanna thank both of you guys. This is a ton of fun. I really appreciate what you guys are building and coming on to to share your story. It's been very fun for me to to witness from afar what what's transpired, and I'm excited to to see where you guys take this.

Jared Anderson [00:51:42]:
Thank you. Thank you for having us, right, on a solid one.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:47]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to [e-mail], or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.